Hybrid techniques for antenna retuning utilizing transmit and receive power information

ABSTRACT

An embodiment of the present invention provides an apparatus, comprising a transceiver, an antenna tuner connecting said transceiver to an antenna, a power sensor adapted to acquire measurements about transmit power, a receive signal strength indicator (RSSI) adapted to acquire measurements about receive power and wherein said tuner tunes said antenna based upon said transmit and receive measurements to optimize said antenna in both the receive and transmit bands.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of and claims priority to U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 13/886,361, filed May 3, 2014, which is acontinuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/484,343, filed May31, 2012 now U.S. Pat. No. 8,457,569, which is a continuation of U.S.patent application Ser. No. 11/800,592, filed May 7, 2007 now U.S. Pat.No. 8,213,886, the disclosures of all of which are incorporated hereinby reference in their entirety.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Wireless devices have become prevalent throughout society. As usersdemand more mobility, there is a tremendous requirement for decreasingpower consumption and thereby increasing battery life. Further, manywireless devices may transmit on a plurality of carrier frequencies andinclude circuits dealing with several frequency bands of operation andmay receive and transmit at varying power levels. In wirelessapplications, the transmitted power is much higher than the receivedpower and to perform the retuning of a mismatched antenna or matchingnetwork, power measurement must be performed.

Thus, there is a strong need for techniques for antenna retuningutilizing transmit and receive power information.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

An embodiment of the present invention provides an apparatus, comprisinga transceiver, an antenna tuner connecting the transceiver to anantenna, a power sensor adapted to acquire measurements about transmitpower, a receive signal strength indicator (RSSI) adapted to acquiremeasurements about receive power and wherein the tuner tunes the antennabased upon the transmit and receive measurements to optimize the antennain both the receive and transmit bands.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present invention is described with reference to the accompanyingdrawings. In the drawings, like reference numbers indicate identical orfunctionally similar elements. Additionally, the left-most digit(s) of areference number identifies the drawing in which the reference numberfirst appears.

FIG. 1 illustrates an apparatus adapted for transmit and receive fullyclosed loop power measurements and antenna retuning of an embodiment ofthe present invention;

FIG. 2 illustrates an apparatus adapted for transmit and receive onehalf closed loop power measurements and antenna retuning of anembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 3 illustrates an apparatus adapted for transmit and receive threequarters closed loop power measurements and antenna retuning of anembodiment of the present invention; and

FIG. 4 illustrates a method according to one embodiment of the presentinvention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following detailed description, numerous specific details are setforth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the invention.However, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that thepresent invention may be practiced without these specific details. Inother instances, well-known methods, procedures, components and circuitshave not been described in detail so as not to obscure the presentinvention.

An algorithm is here, and generally, considered to be a self-consistentsequence of acts or operations leading to a desired result. Theseinclude physical manipulations of physical quantities. Usually, thoughnot necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical ormagnetic signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined,compared, and otherwise manipulated. It has proven convenient at times,principally for reasons of common usage, to refer to these signals asbits, values, elements, symbols, characters, terms, numbers or the like.It should be understood, however, that all of these and similar termsare to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and aremerely convenient labels applied to these quantities.

Unless specifically stated otherwise, as apparent from the followingdiscussions, it is appreciated that throughout the specificationdiscussions utilizing terms such as “processing,” “computing,”“calculating,” “determining,” or the like, refer to the action and/orprocesses of a computer or computing system, or similar electroniccomputing device, that manipulate and/or transform data represented asphysical, such as electronic, quantities within the computing system'sregisters and/or memories into other data similarly represented asphysical quantities within the computing system's memories, registers orother such information storage, transmission or display devices.

The processes and displays presented herein are not inherently relatedto any particular computing device or other apparatus. Various generalpurpose systems may be used with programs in accordance with theteachings herein, or it may prove convenient to construct a morespecialized apparatus to perform the desired method. The desiredstructure for a variety of these systems will appear from thedescription below. In addition, embodiments of the present invention arenot described with reference to any particular programming language. Itwill be appreciated that a variety of programming languages may be usedto implement the teachings of the invention as described herein. Inaddition, it should be understood that operations, capabilities; andfeatures described herein may be implemented with any combination ofhardware (discrete or integrated circuits) and software.

Use of the terms “coupled” and “connected”, along with theirderivatives, may be used. It should be understood that these terms arenot intended as synonyms for each other. Rather, in particularembodiments, “connected” may be used to indicate that two or moreelements are in direct physical or electrical contact with each other.“Coupled” my be used to indicated that two or more elements are ineither direct or indirect (with other intervening elements between them)physical or electrical contact with each other, and/or that the two ormore elements co-operate or interact with each other (e.g. as in a causean effect relationship).

Turning to FIG. 1, is an apparatus, comprising a transceiver 100, anantenna tuner 125 connecting the transceiver 100 to an antenna 130, apower sensor 145 adapted to acquire measurements about transmit power, areceive signal strength indicator (RSSI) 155 adapted to acquiremeasurements about receive power, and wherein the tuner 125 tunes theantenna 130 based upon the transmit and receive measurements to optimizethe antenna 130 in both the receive and transmit bands.

In an embodiment of the present invention, the transceiver may furthercomprise a modulator 105 driving a variable power amplifier module (PAM)110 and a low noise amplifier 140 adapted to receive the output of thevariable PAM 110 via a switch 115, and a variable gain amplifier (VGA)135 receiving the output of the low noise amplifier 140. The RSSI mayreceive the output of the VGA and output it to a processor 160, therebyproviding the receive sense for the receive signal measurements. Theoutput of the PAM 110 may be coupled via a coupler 120 and switch 115 tothe power sensor 145 to determine the transmit measurements. In anembodiment of the present invention the apparatus may further comprise amicrocontroller 165 adapted to received transmit measurements from thepower sensor 145 and receive measurements from the RSSI 155 via aprocessor 160 and pass this information to an application specificprogrammable integrated circuit (ASPIC) 150 to control the tuner 125.

Turning now to FIG. 2, a base-band may specify to the microcontroller155 the transmit and receive state 210. Further, the apparatus of FIG. 2illustrates the microcontroller may transmit to the ASPIC either adefault received state 220 only or an optimized transmit or receivestate 230 based on a base-band specification.

FIG. 3, illustrates the base-band specifying to the microcontroller thetransmit and receive state or receive state only 310. Themicrocontroller 155 of FIG. 3 may transmit to the ASPIC either a receivedefault state only 320 or an optimized transmit state based on abase-band specification 330.

Turning now to FIG. 4, shown generally as 400, is a method according toan embodiment of the present invention, comprising connecting atransceiver to an antenna via an antenna tuner 410, using a power sensoradapted to acquire measurements about transmit power and a receivesignal strength indicator (RSSI) adapted to acquire measurements aboutreceive power 420 and tuning the antenna with the tuner based upon thetransmit and receive measurements to optimize the antenna in both thereceive and transmit bands 430. An embodiment of the present method mayfurther comprise using a modulator driving a power amplifier module(PAM), a low noise amplifier adapted to receive the output of the PAMvia a switch and a variable gain amplifier (VGA) receiving the output ofthe low noise amplifier in the transceiver. Also, the present method mayfurther comprise receiving the output of the VGA by the RSSI andoutputting to a processor, thereby providing the receive sense for thereceive signal measurements and coupling the output of the PAM via acoupler and switch to the power sensor to determine the transmitmeasurements. An embodiment of the present method may further compriseusing a microcontroller adapted to received transmit measurements fromthe power sensor and receive measurements from the RSSI via a processorand passing this information to an application specific programmableintegrated circuit (ASPIC) to control the tuner.

Specifying by a base-band to the microcontroller the transmit andreceive state or specifying by a base-band to the microcontroller thetransmit and receive state or receive state only may also be included insome embodiments of the present invention. In still a furtherembodiment, the present method may further comprise transmitting by themicrocontroller to the ASPIC either a default received state only or anoptimized transmit or receive state based on a base-band specification.

Some embodiments of the present invention may be implemented, forexample, using a machine-readable medium or article which may store aninstruction or a set of instructions that, if executed by a machine, forexample, by the microcontroller 130 or ASPIC 135 of FIG. 1, or by othersuitable machines, cause the machine to perform a method and/oroperations in accordance with embodiments of the invention. Such machinemay include, for example, any suitable processing platform, computingplatform, computing device, processing device, computing system,processing system, computer, processor, or the like, and may beimplemented using any suitable combination of hardware and/or software.The machine-readable medium or article may include, for example, anysuitable type of memory unit, memory device, memory article, memorymedium, storage device, storage article, storage medium and/or storageunit, for example, memory, removable or non-removable media, erasable ornon-erasable media, writeable or re-writeable media, digital or analogmedia, hard disk, floppy disk, Compact Disk Read Only Memory (CD-ROM),Compact Disk Recordable (CD-R), Compact Disk Re-Writeable (CD-RW),optical disk, magnetic media, various types of Digital Versatile Disks(DVDs), a tape, a cassette, or the like. The instructions may includeany suitable type of code, for example, source code, compiled code,interpreted code, executable code, static code, dynamic code, or thelike, and may be implemented using any suitable high-level, low-level,object-S oriented, visual, compiled and/or interpreted programminglanguage, e.g., C, C++, Java, BASIC, Pascal, Fortran, Cobol, assemblylanguage, machine code, or the like.

In an embodiment of the present invention the machine-accessible mediumthat provides instructions, which when accessed, may cause the machineto perform operations comprising connecting a transceiver to an antennavia an antenna tuner, using a power sensor adapted to acquiremeasurements about transmit power and a receive signal strengthindicator (RSSI) adapted to acquire measurements about receive power,and tuning the antenna with the tuner based upon the transmit andreceive measurements to optimize the antenna in both the receive andtransmit bands. The machine-accessible medium of the present inventionmay further comprise the instructions causing the machine to performoperations further comprising using a modulator driving a poweramplifier module (PAM), a low noise amplifier adapted to receive theoutput of the PAM via a switch, and a variable gain amplifier (VGA)receiving the output of the low noise amplifier in the transceiver. Themachine-accessible medium of the present invention yet still may furthercomprise the instructions causing the machine to perform operationsfurther comprising receiving the output of the VGA by the RSSI andoutputting to a processor, thereby providing the receive sense for thereceive signal measurements and still further comprise the instructionscausing the machine to perform operations further comprising couplingthe output of the PAM via a coupler and switch to the power sensor todetermine the transmit measurements and using a microcontroller adaptedto received transmit measurements from the power sensor and receivemeasurements from the RSSI via a processor and passing this informationto an application specific programmable integrated circuit (ASPIC) tocontrol the tuner.

Some embodiments of the present invention may be implemented bysoftware, by hardware, or by any combination of software and/or hardwareas may be suitable for specific applications or in accordance withspecific design requirements. Embodiments of the invention may includeunits and/or sub-units, which may be separate of each other or combinedtogether, in whole or in part, and may be implemented using specific,multi-purpose or general processors or controllers, or devices as areknown in the art. Some embodiments of the invention may include buffers,registers, stacks, storage units and/or memory units, for temporary orlong-term storage of data or in order to facilitate the operation of aspecific embodiment.

Regarding the timing for retuning, in an embodiment of the presentinvention the antenna retuning may occur once per frame, before theburst. In this case power is measured and averaged on the previousburst, the calculation of next biasing points is performed and newvalues are applied for the following burst. This has the advantages of alot of time to compute, power savings, no transients issues (spurious),fast enough for humans (−100 ms for retuning).

While the present invention has been described in terms of what are atpresent believed to be its preferred embodiments, those skilled in theart will recognize that various modifications to the discloseembodiments can be made without departing from the scope of theinvention as defined by the following claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A machine-readable storage device comprisingexecutable instructions which, responsive to being executed by aprocessor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:obtaining first data associated with transmit power of a wirelesscommunication device; obtaining second data associated with receivepower of the wireless communication device; and adjusting a tunablematching network of the wireless communication device for each framebased upon the first and second data to adjust performance of an antennaof the wireless communication device in both receive and transmit bands,wherein both of the first and second data is utilized in determiningeach adjustment to the tunable matching network.
 2. The machine-readablestorage device of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprisereceiving an output of a receive signal strength indicator device,wherein a modulator drives a power amplifier module, wherein a low noiseamplifier receives an output of the power amplifier module via a switch,wherein a variable gain amplifier receives an output of the low noiseamplifier, wherein an output of the variable gain amplifier is receivedby the receive signal strength indicator device.
 3. The machine-readablestorage device of claim 2, wherein the processor is coupled to theoutput of the power amplifier module via a coupler and a switch toenable determining the first data.
 4. The machine-readable storagedevice of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise providing thefirst and second data to an application specific programmable integratedcircuit to control the tunable matching network.
 5. The machine-readablestorage device of claim 1, wherein transmit and receive states arespecified to the processor based on a base-band specification.
 6. Themachine-readable storage device of claim 1, wherein a receive statewithout a transmit state is specified to the processor based on abase-band specification.
 7. The machine-readable storage device of claim1, wherein the operations further comprise providing a default receivedstate to an application specific programmable integrated circuit.
 8. Themachine-readable storage device of claim 1, wherein the obtaining of thesecond data is via an receive signal strength indicator device.
 9. Amethod, comprising: obtaining, by a controller of a communicationdevice, data associated with transmit power and associated with receivepower; and adjusting, by the controller, a tunable matching network ofthe communication device for each frame based upon the data to adjustperformance of an antenna of the communication device in both receiveand transmit bands.
 10. The method of claim 9, wherein the data is firstand second data, and wherein the first and second data is utilized indetermining each adjustment to the tunable matching network.
 11. Themethod of claim 10, comprising: driving a power amplifier module using amodulator; receiving an output of the power amplifier module at a lownoise amplifier via a switch; and receiving an output of the low noiseamplifier at a variable gain amplifier.
 12. The method of claim 11,comprising receiving an output of the variable gain amplifier at anreceive signal strength indicator device.
 13. The method of claim 12,comprising coupling the output of the power amplifier module via acoupler and switch to the controller to determine the first and seconddata.
 14. The method of claim 13, wherein the controller comprises anapplication specific programmable integrated circuit.
 15. A wirelesscommunication device comprising: an antenna; a tunable matching networkcoupled with the antenna; and a controller coupled with the tunablematching network, wherein the controller obtains first data associatedwith transmit power based on measurements of a power sensor, wherein thecontroller obtains second data associated with receive power based on anreceive signal strength indicator device, and wherein the tunablematching network is adjusted for each frame based upon the first dataand the second data to adjust performance of the antenna in both receiveand transmit bands.
 16. The wireless communication device of claim 15,wherein both of the first data and the second data are utilized indetermining each adjustment to the tunable matching network.
 17. Thewireless communication device of claim 15, further comprising: amodulator driving a power amplifier module; a low noise amplifieradapted to receive an output of the power amplifier module via a switch;a variable gain amplifier receiving an output of the low noiseamplifier; and a processor, wherein the output of the variable gainamplifier is received by the controller and outputted to the processor.18. The wireless communication device of claim 17, further comprising: acoupler and a switch that couples the output of the power amplifiermodule to the controller to determine the first data.
 19. The wirelesscommunication device of claim 15, further comprising a processor,wherein the controller provides the first and second data to anapplication specific programmable integrated circuit to control thetunable matching network.
 20. The wireless communication device of claim19, wherein one of a default received state only or an optimizedtransmit or receive state based on a base-band specification is providedby the controller to the application specific programmable integratedcircuit.